Alston William P. (b.1921), American philosopher widely acknowledged as one of the most important contemporary epistemologists and one of the most important philosophers of religion of the twentieth century. He is particularly known for his argument that putative perception of God is epistemologically on all fours with putative perception of everyday material objects.
Alston graduated from Centenary College in 1942 and the U.S. Army in 1946. A fine musician, he had to choose between philosophy and music. Philosophy won out; he received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and began his philosophical career at the University of Michigan, where he taught for twenty-two years. Since 1980 he has taught at Syracuse University. Although his dissertation and some of his early work were on Whitehead, he soon turned to philosophy of language (Philosophy of Language, 1964). Since the early 1970s Alston has concentrated on epistemology and philosophy of religion. In epistemology he has defended foundationalism (although not classical foundationalism), investigated epistemic justification with unusual depth and penetration, and called attention to important levels distinctions. His chief works here are Epistemic Justification (1989), a collection of essays; and The Reliability of Sense Perception (1993). His chief work in philosophy of religion is Divine Nature and Human Language (1989), a collection of essays on metaphysical and epistemological topics; and Perceiving God (1991). The latter is a magisterial argument for the conclusion that experiential awareness of God, more specifically perception of God, makes an important contribution to the grounds of religious belief. In addition to this scholarly work, Alston was a founder of the Society of Christian Philosophers, a professional society with more than 1,100 members, and the founding editor of Faith and Philosophy. See also EPISTEMOLOGY, EVIDENTIALISM , FOUNDATIONALISM , JUSTIFICATION , PHILOS — OPHY OF RELIGIO. A.P.